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Riveted by his words, all Jules could do was stare at him. “Remember that night you told me not to fall in love with you?”
Tears pricked the backs of her eyelids. “Yes.”
“Well, I didn’t. Fall in love with you, that is.”
Her breath trapped in her lungs and she scrabbled for air. “Bully for you.”
“I didn’t fall in love with you then or the next day or the day after that.”
Crikey, why ever did Jack think this guy could sell anything?
“You have my admiration for holding out.”
Those DeLuca electric blues trapped her in their beam. “Because I was already in love with you. I had been since the day I met you, maybe before I met you. Only with you, Jules, do I feel all these broken pieces of me fall into place.”
Unwavering in his gaze, he walked toward her. Slow and purposeful, with no hesitation. Not wanting to feel at a disadvantage, she held her ground and looked him straight in the eye. New Jules, stronger than ever. But all that girl power went to the dogs the closer he got.
He loved her.
Well, she knewthat.But any woman who told you she didn’t need to hear her man say it out loud was a lousy, rotten liar.
Mere inches away, he burrowed in his pocket and took out a piece of paper. As he unfolded it, she realized what she was looking at. Shit on a shingle.
“Evan wrote that,” she bit out pre-emptively.
“Liar.”
She couldn’t help her smile. It had been a long shot.
“You left this for me the last time you were at my house.”
The words she had written came back to her in a jumbled haze. As soon as she saw how far gone he was that awful day, the silly note was forgotten.
He smoothed it out on the scuffed-up, stainless steel counter.
Jules + Evan miss Tad (ez too spel!!) + luv him vary much.
“My heart was breaking and you pulled this manipulative crap on me?” He turned the makeshift card over to reveal the rest of it.
I am not adove using my kid to get wot I want. Luv Jules.
Helpless to control her reaction, she let loose a laugh. It was pretty funny, misspellings and all, but she needed to be strong here. She needed to be sure.
“That was then,” she said shakily, as if a week could have possibly changed one iota of her love for him.
“True, but let’s go back a little further than that, shall we? How about the moment you marched into this restaurant and made your knocked-up announcement? Do you remember that, Jules? How it all started? Because I do. You stole the show and you’ve been stealing stuff ever since—my sleep, my peace of mind, my fucking heart.”
He grasped her hand and put it over his navel then moved it dangerously low and close to her favorite Tad part. Yes, even above the forearms. She tried to pull away, but he held her fast. Emotion welled in her throat, choking and freeing at once.
“Here.”
He drew her covered hand from the belt buckle higher over his abs.
“Here.”
He dragged it flush to his warm chest, now vibrating with thethumpety-thumpof his heart through his double-breasted chef jacket. His next words were a strangled whisper.
“And here.”
